iFile: Document and Image Conversion Tool

good
key review info
application features
  • convert documents
  • (3 more, see all...)

There are so many file formats out there that, at times, it can be a real burden to keep up with all of them. The more common formats are supported by almost every program, but there are advantages to each. If you need to publish things on the web, you want the smaller, compressed file formats, but if you are looking to retain quality you are going to go after the lossless formats, or those that offer better formatting, in case of documents.

Whatever the case may be, formatting usually involves opening the document or image in the application that created it, or a conversion application and then saving a new version in the desired format. This isn't a big deal if you only have one document, but, if you need to convert tens of files at a time, things can get messy. Sure, many programs have batch functions, but more often than not the batch is overlooked, either because it is difficult to configure, or because it is simply overlooked.

iFile is a program that is intended to make such conversions painless and simple.

Two or more, in one Unlike other programs that can convert images or text, iFile can convert both images and documents from and to the most common formats. It can even convert to and from HTML and XHTML documents, and documents to audio files.

Another thing you can easily do is lock or unlock files and folders, as many as you want at a time.

Using iFile is as simple as dragging what you want to convert into it and then selecting one of the four appropriate tabs to start converting.

Documents When it comes to text documents, iFile can work with several formats: Simple Text (.TXT), Rich Text Format (RTF) - (RTFD), Microsoft Word (.doc), XML Documents, HTML Documents, and HTML Web Archives.

The conversion between one format and another is pretty straightforward, although, across some formats there are issues when it comes to special characters. Also, because some formats support formatting and content that others do not, there will be a certain loss when formatting 'down'. Obviously, a plain text document will not contain all the information available in a Microsoft Word one.

You can opt for either the Auto Text Encoding or Unicode UTF-16, and in the case of HTML and ARCH, you can choose to discard images.

XHTML Converting to and from HTML and XHTML documents is done in this tab. Here you can choose from several Text Encodings such as Unicode UTF-8 (which is recommended), Unicode UTF-16, Big 5, Windows - 1252, and Shift - JIS. Enter the filename you want and then click on the appropriate "From HTML to XHTML" or "From XHTML to HTML" button.

To Audio Under this tab you can convert a text document to an audio file. You can choose from several of the Text-to-Speech voices, although not all of them are present in the list for some reason. In case you are only converting one file, you can specify a name for the converted file. If you're converting several files, select the auto name option to have the program use the original name as a base. The resulted sound files are AIFF encoded.

Images Under this tab you can convert to and from the most common image file formats including: PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG, PICT, PSD, and JPG2.

Not really much to say here, it will convert from one to another. However, it will also convert icon files to any of the above mentioned formats, making it easy to get the icons in a more accessible format.

Quirks and oddities? Doing anything with it takes about the same amount of time, whether it is converting from JPG to BMP or locking/unlocking a single file. This is very dubious behavior, since it will present you with the same progress bar when you attempt to do something that will clearly not work such as converting a disk image to a GIF image.

The fact that it always places the converted file in the same place as the original can sometimes be a pain, and it would be nice if you could change this behavior to have it place the converted files in a certain output folder.

You cannot resize the window and the file list will never display more than 5 items at a time? if you want to use it to convert a hundred files, navigating through them is horrible. Furthermore, if you have the scroll arrows set to be placed 'together at both ends,' like I do, you will find that the vertical scroll bar becomes overlapped and hard to use.

Sometimes it will not convert from one valid file format to another.

The Good Good as a one stop conversion tool instead of using multiple programs. Easy to use.

The Bad Behaves strangely at times and has all sorts of odd issues. It does not support too many formats compared to serious conversion programs.

The Truth Unfortunately, iFile stops just short of actually being useful. You can't just keep it open and add files to it when you come across them and convert them at a later date, because the list is so very limited. The fact that it spends as much time converting an image as it does locking and unlocking a files speaks tomes about how optimized the conversion is. It's a good start, but it still needs more work.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:

Review image
Review image
Review image
Review image

user interface 3
features 4
ease of use 5
pricing / value 3


final rating 3
Editor's review
good
 
NEXT REVIEW: xGestures